Poverty

It's Blog Action Day with the subject being poverty, and I view this important topic with a passion. So, what is poverty? In earlier times, the majority of people lived in poverty while the few control all the money. (wait..isn't that how it is today?) Today a child may feel that they live in poverty if they don't own a computer or cell phone. The adults may feel they live in poverty if they own the least expensive home or car on the block. In other words, "poverty" is a subjective term.

Let's concentrate our definition of poverty within the United States. A little history...I have owned beautiful homes, new cars, traveled overseas, had a 401K and other investments, but now I own very little. For example, I lost my glasses and cannot afford new ones, and paying for dental work is difficult. If I have a tooth that needs dental work, I usually opt for the dentist to pull out the tooth because that procedure is less expensive. However, I "count my blessings" because I have a roof over my head and food in the refrigerator. I have a mode of transportation (scooter).

Further down the poverty scale are the homeless. What a "black eye" this gives our country! Are we totally dead and blind to the needs of the homeless? Do we think that the homeless choose to be homeless? How ironic that many seemingly well-to-do homeowners are now losing their homes due to the sub-prime lending scandal.

A huge number of the homeless have mental illnesses. When the psychiatric inpatient laws changed some years ago to "free" the mentally ill, (supposedly because locking up a person was deemed inhumane), the result was that we now have the mentally ill often being homeless. What a tragedy!

I believe a person lives in poverty if they cannot afford decent food, housing and medical care. In other words, if a person is eating practically nothing but rice and beans, lives in squalor and can't pay for doctors' care or medication, they are living in poverty.

What can be done? Of course we can't just hand out dollar bills to those in poverty. However, we can do this in the form of creating "the poor house"..(see the board game "LIFE"), raising the qualification income limits for food stamps and instigating Obama's plan to provide health care for all.